


Shaken

by NicoleCollard



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Ellie Miller needs a hug, F/M, First Kiss, Getting Together, Post-Season/Series 03, colleagues to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23476759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleCollard/pseuds/NicoleCollard
Summary: When a bomb goes off in Broadchurch, Ellie Miller is worried for her annoying boss and friend Alec Hardy.
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 18
Kudos: 170





	Shaken

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everyone.
> 
> This is my first fic for the Broadchurch fandom. I hope it's not too dead already...
> 
> I know everyone's already written their take on how Ellie and Alec would get together after series 3, but here's mine too. I hope you all like it!
> 
> I need to warn you that English is not my first language, so please excuse any mistakes you may find. :)

Being a cop and a single mum wasn't easy.

That's what Ellie Miller was thinking while she struggled with her two sons through the morning routine to get them ready for school. Her eldest, Tom, suddenly spent hours in front of the bathroom mirror every morning, while her youngest, little Fred, tried to get her full attention over every single ocurrence of his, which always made her be late to work.

Her life as a DS was going better, fortunately. After Danny Latimer, Sandbrook and Trish Winterman's cases, 'Miller and Hardy' had finally won the recognition they deserved amongst their colleagues. Their work tandem had become unbreakable and the public opinion had started to give them some credit too.

Despite Hardy's lack of social skills, his awkwardness and irritability, Ellie secretly admitted to herself that she had never worked with anyone better. Alec Hardy was the best partner she would ever find, even if he had the ability to piss her to no end sometimes. But he could also be sensitive and, since his daughter Daisy had moved in with him, even sweet. And Ellie trusted him with her life, that was for sure.

Sometimes she had even surprised herself thinking how handsome Hardy's profile looked when he was deep in thought, his brow frowned, his lips pressed tight. How nice it was when Hardy left a cup of tea on her desk without her asking. How intense Hardy's proud, dark gaze was on her whenever she worked out some attacker's identity or found out any hidden evidence.

Ellie had even surprised herself wishing Hardy would... hold her sometimes, those days when she couldn't carry on, not on her own anymore. It made her laugh bitterly, though, alone in her couch some nights, thinking about the times she had shaken off his hand in the past when he had tried to rub her back to comfort her, the times she had stubbornly refused to be hugged by him.

But of course, those thoughts only attacked Ellie in her most vulnerable moments. She had been alone for too long now... It was clear there could never be anything between her and Hardy. They would work as well as oil and water together, she had told herself a million times. The rest of the time she was mostly alright with the life she was now living, she was just Miller working with her partner 'in crime', or Miller pulling Hardy's leg.

Her mobile buzzed and Ellie checked the message while she pinned up her last bunch of unruly curls. It was from Hardy, of course.

_Miller, where are you? These reports are not going to fill in on their own._

"Shit", she cursed. The previous evening, they had decided to show up at the station first thing in the morning to do the paperwork before everyone else arrived. Their last case had been tough and they had been so tired that they had decided to call it a day and go home with the promise of closing everything the next morning. But of course, Ellie was late, as ever. With only one hand, she wrote and sent her answer back, holding a comb in her other hand.

_On my way. 5 min._

"Fred, hurry up! I'm already late!"

The toddler showed up at the bathroom door with a toy truck firmly clasped in his tiny hands, a big smile on his face.

"Bringin' this to school, Mum", he announced.

"Okay", she complied without further fighting, motioning to Fred to turn around and let her comb his curls. "Are you sure today's Toys day?"

"Hmm", the little boy nodded.

"Lovely", Ellie kissed the top of Fred's head when she was done. "Go downstairs and tell Tom to finish his breakfast, will you, sweetie? We need to go now."

"Tom is grumpy", Fred complained with a pout.

"He'll listen to you if he doesn't want to BE GROUNDED FOR A WEEK", Ellie made sure her oldest son could hear her from the kitchen.

Fred went downstairs as instructed as Ellie grabbed her blazer from her bedroom. When she finally entered the kitchen, Tom was already putting on his shoes.

Ellie's lips had just started to curl up when a deafening noise shook the windows. It lasted just a second but it was enough to make Ellie's heart fret. Fred's eyes got impossibly bigger and filled up with tears.

"What was that?", Tom asked in confusion, taking his hands off his ears.

Something had just gone off in Broadchurch. Fred started crying, his toy truck falling off his hand. Ellie stroked his cheek soothingly for a second and then headed quickly for the front door, with Tom trailing behind her.

"No, Tom! Stay inside with Fred", Ellie instructed while she opened the door and stepped outside.

A cloud of smoke could be seen clearly in the distance over the buildings from her home's driveway, not far from where she reckoned the police station to be. Ellie's heart skipped a beat in fear.

' _Hardy_ ', she thought immediately, her hand already fishing for her phone in her bag as she went back inside the house.

"What happened", Tom asked with a worried and curious expression.

"I don't know", Ellie told her kids while she pressed her mobile against her ear. "I'm going to phone your grandad for him to take you both to school today. Stay home and keep an eye on your brother until he arrives, please Tom. This is important. It might be just some stupid joke, but it might be something serious."

The teenager nodded his agreement and took Fred's hand. The toddler's eyes were still full of tears, but he wasn't crying anymore. When Ellie bent down to kiss his cheek, Fred only rubbed his eyes with his sleeve to get rid of the last tears. Ellie brushed Tom's shoulder with her fingers and rushed out again, closing the door behind her while she still tried to speak to her Dad.

When that part was finally sorted, Ellie got in the car and started the engine, making a new call while she left the driveway. She could already hear sirens in the distance and she feared the worst.

"You wanker, answer the bloody phone", she muttered, her panic growing by the minute. But nobody answered her call, even though she tried and tried until the very moment her car went round the last corner and she could finally see the station.

The building was standing, but all the front windows had shattered with the explosion. A heavy column of smoke poured out of a police car that was just a few feet away from the stairs where Ellie liked to sit to breath some air when a case got too tricky.

The fire brigade had just arrived and was starting to get ready to extinguish the fire. There were already a couple of ambulances there too, and the paramedics were attending the wounded. As Ellie could see when she got out of the car, her heart out of control, there were no mortal victims in sight, just a few pedestrians being bandaged, a bunch of people in mild shock and two of her colleagues -the ones who had taken the night shift- trying to sort out the chaos.

Ellie ran towards the stairs scanning her surroundings, in search for a tall figure in a suit and with messy, dark auburn hair. But Alec Hardy was nowhere to be seen. She checked with the paramedics first, but they were too busy right then.

And before she could ask her colleagues, Alec's thin silhouette strode throughout the broken glass of the station main door carrying a couple of bottles of water in his hands. In the distance, he seemed unscathed, even if his face was dirty and his expression betrayed some pain when he walked.

Ellie climbed the stairs towards Hardy, her eyes filling with tears as she approached her boss. Hardy then caught sight of her and his expression switched from concentrated to alarmed. He stopped in his tracks and raised his arms for her to confirm in one look he was alright.

“Mill _ahr_ , I'm fine. Don't-”

But suddenly, that wasn't enough for Ellie. So she kept approaching Alec until she was invading his personal space and, without asking or thinking twice, she threw her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest.

Alec's eyebrows shot up in surprise and it took him a few seconds to process the fact that Ellie was hugging him as if she wanted to squeeze the blood out of his body. It only lasted a moment, so when he finally started to react, Ellie was already breaking the embrace and slapping his left shoulder, which made him wince and growl in pain.

“Where's you phone, you knob?”, she asked wiping away her tears with the heels of her hands.

Alec blushed and stuttered as he tried to answer her.

“I don't know. I just- I left-”

He couldn't finish, because all of a sudden, one of the uniforms was by their side and snatched the two bottles of water away from Alec, sending Ellie a cheeky look on his way back to the chaos. When they were alone again, Hardy massaged his left shoulder a bit embarrassed and cleared his throat to try and make the situation a bit less awkward.

“Are you hurt?”, Ellie inquired, still a bit shaken.

“I'm fine. I was inside when the car exploded. The shock wave knocked me down, but it's nothing. My glasses are useless now, though”, Alec explained as he produced them from his pocket.

“Fuck your glasses. Let the paramedics take a look at that shoulder”, she commanded with a tone that clearly didn't take a no for an answer.

Ellie stood there while the paramedic inspected Alec's shoulder. After forcing a few movements on it, the woman diagnosed him with a minor shoulder sprain, nothing truly serious, but still she placed Alec's arm in a sling to prevent him from doing unnecessary movements and instructed him to take some anti-infammatories.

In the meantime, the station had become a hive. Uniforms and detectives who were showing up at work poured in and out of the building carrying chairs and papers or cleaning the mess. When the firefighters finished putting the fire out, SOCO team started to collect evidence form the car. Their boss, Elaine Jenkinson was already out there too leading the works.

When the paramedic decided she was done with Alec Hardy, he headed for the building to collect his phone and help their colleagues, Ellie trailing behind him.

“What do you think you're doing? You should go home and rest. The paramedic was very clear about it”, she scolded him.

“Oh, shut up, Mill _ahr_.”

But his first attempt at lifting a drawer from the floor made him wince, and Ellie clicked her tongue with annoyance.

“Stubborn git”, she snatched the drawer away from his hands as Jenkinson entered the building. The CS sent Alec home in the blink of an eye and, when he started to protest, Jenkinson asked Ellie to drag him out and make sure he stayed at home for the day.

She almost had to push him out the building and into the car park.

“Where's your car?”

“I walked”, Alec informed her, still a bit cross.

“Okay, get in mine. Now.”

On the first half of their ride to Alec Hardy's home, they stayed silent, the images of the explosion still too vivid in their minds. After a while, it was Ellie who spoke first, of course.

“Who do you think did it?”

Alec shot a glance in her direction and shook his head, a bit deflated now.

“I don't know. Maybe some friends of the terrorist whose alibi we proved wrong yesterday”, he ventured and Ellie nodded thoughtfully. “But it's too soon to say. You could go back to the station later and bring some of the reports from SOCO just to-”

“No way. You don't know if Jenkinson's going to appoint us for this case.”

“She will if it has any connection with our terrorist.”

“We'll see, but I'm not leaving you out of my sight today”, Ellie said stubbornly.

“For God's sake, Mill _ahr_ ”, Alec shouted losing his patience. “It's just a shoulder sprain, not a concussion.”

Right then, they arrived at Alec's home and Ellie stopped the car.

“Out”, she commanded, and Alec rolled his eyes at her harshness but obeyed without another word.

When they stepped into his house, Ellie suggested Alec to change into something more comfortable while she made some tea. She took two mugs from the cupboard and a couple of teabags from a box in the first drawer on the right.

“Do you need help?”, she asked from the kitchen when she heard him disappear into his bedroom, and she instantly blushed at what her bold suggestion implied.

“Of course not. I think I can manage divest myself on my own”, came Alec's voice from afar.

Ellie shook her head and started to heat up some water. She had just poured it into the mugs when Alec stepped into the kitchen behind her. When Ellie turned around to bring the mugs to the living-room, she bumped against Alec, who grabbed her wrist and one of the mugs in a reflex before she could drop it to the floor. Ellie gasped in shock at the closeness and the contact, so Alec -now in a blue jumper instead of his blazer-, let go of her wrist and stepped back, the hot mug safe in his hand.

“W-Where's your sling?”, Ellie stuttered, trying to mask the trepidation she felt, as she took the mug from Alec's hand without even brushing his fingers. “G-Go put it on! Go.”

“Bloody hell, I'm home now. I don't need-”

“Must everything always be a fight with you, Hardy?”, Ellie complained and strode past him into his living-room.

With an annoyed snort, she headed for the coffee table, determined not to check whether Alec Hardy had decided to stop behaving like a spoilt child or not.

"Why did you hug me earlier, Ellie?"

Alec's voice was indefinable when he asked. He was staring at her from the doorway, his arms in his pockets, the sling nowhere to be seen. Ellie turned around a bit out of breath. She wasn't expecting the question at all, at least not so out of the blue. She frowned and turned back to the coffee table, where she placed their mugs.

"Hmm, well... I was-", Ellie began to explain and then she stopped in her tracks and looked at Alec in surprise. "You just call me Ellie?"

"No, I didn't", he denied frowning, as if caught red-handed.

"Yes, you did!", Ellie shook her head as she took a seat in Hardy's couch, in the spot where she had sat so many other times before. "It's alright, you know? It's what friends do."

"What?"

"Calling each other by their first names, _sir_ ", Ellie mocked him. "Making tea for each other. And even hugging, yeah. No big deal."

A heavy silence fell over them after Ellie's last words. She sipped from her mug as Alec Hardy left his spot near the door and approached his armchair next to the sofa. But he didn't sit. He stood there awkwardly staring at Ellie for a few seconds, as if he couldn't decide what to do next. Then he spoke again.

"D-Do you want a hug... now?"

Ellie raised her head so quickly that she feared her neck would be sore later. With a frown, she fixed her disconcerted eyes on Alec, who was still standing there in front of her, his expression innocent but quite determined.

"What the hell, Hardy? Why-? Have you-?", Ellie stammered, but she soon lost heart and stopped talking.

Her expressive features started to change bit by bit and suddenly, there was only a deep longing in her face. With a sigh, she looked away and nodded almost imperceptibly, as if she were ashamed of showing vulnerability in front of her partner.

Then Alec opened his arms as an invitation, right like he had done in the court restroom a couple of years ago. Ellie hesitated for a few seconds, but then she stood up from the sofa and approached Alec slowly until they were just a few inches apart. Her heart was beating so fast that Ellie was sure she would get a broken rib.

' _For God's sake, you're just friends! Hug him! You did it earlier!_ ', she told herself and, without further thought, she closed the distance between them and put her arms around Alec's middle. Ellie held her breath unconsciously, and only let it out again when Alec's arms came around her shoulders and he brought her closer until her body was fully pressed against his.

It was very odd at first, but there was something incredibly reassuring in Alec Hardy's embrace that made Ellie want to relax in his arms.

It ended up being the longest hug both Ellie and Alec had ever taken part in. With her ear against his chest, she could hear Alec's now strong and steady beats and feel the rhythm of his breathing. Ellie could also smell the camphor from his jumper. She finally closed her eyes to let her other senses take it all in.

Something was shifting between them right before their eyes. Had been shifting for a very long time, maybe, without any of them noticing.

After what seemed like ages, in which their bodies finally learnt how to fit in each other's arms, Ellie's voice spoke again, low and gentle.

"I was worried."

Alec nodded slowly at Ellie's confession against the top of her head. There it was at last the answer to his first question. Encouraged by her honesty, he asked again, his voice a bit rough:

"Is that what friends do? Care for each other? Worry?"

Without breaking the embrace, Ellie lifted her face from Alec's wounded shoulder to look at him right in the eye, trying to figure out where her partner was going. She nodded softly and teased him a bit.

"Exactly. What are you, five? You're worse than Fred."

Alec rolled his eyes at the remark but guessed that Ellie needed to lighten the mood a bit, since things were getting quite intense between them and they might be about to pass the point of no return. He waited a few more seconds, then his jaw muscles tightened in anticipation and he whispered his next question.

"Do they kiss too? Friends."

Ellie's lips parted slightly in surprise and her eyebrows shot up, making her already huge eyes imposibly bigger.

"Well, m-maybe sometimes, but I don't think so", she answered after swallowing hard.

"Do you want us to be friends... Ellie?"

"Not at all... Alec."

Then both moved forward at the same time and their lips met in the middle. There were so many unspoken words in that kiss, so many hidden messages. The urgency, the hesitance, the tenderness... were enough proof of the fire that had been consuming both Alec and Ellie for ages now.

Alec removed his right hand from Ellie's shoulder and cupped her cheek as he kissed her, which sent a jolt of electricity to the pitch of her stomach. The sensation was surreal: she would have never guessed that Alec Hardy could be such a good kisser. Being in his arms, kissed by him like that, felt so right that it made things fell into place, as if a long-lost puzzle piece had just been found at last.

It was so overwhelming that Ellie could barely think, her whole body focused on all the spots where Alec was in contact with it.

When they finally broke the kiss and leaned back, they looked at each other apprehensively, a bit worried by the other's reaction. And what they saw was acceptance, a challenge and some insecurity too. The discovery brought them such relief that both started giggling, their foreheads pressed together. In truth, physicality was the last bit of intimacy their impending relationship needed to take off.

"What the hell is this, Alec?", Ellie asked.

"I have no bloody idea", he shrugged, his hand still brushing her jaw. "But I think I'd like us to find out... together."

"Are you asking me out, _sir_?", she teased him with a cheeky grin.

"So like you to make this even more difficult, Mill _ahr_."

"Oh, now I'm Miller again?"

"You'll always be Mill _ahr_ when you'll get on my nerves", Alec shot back, "which is ninety percent of the time, by the way."

"Oi, stop complaining, you old man, and kiss me again if you don't want me to rile you up the other ten percent of the time as well."

With a chuckle, Alec Hardy leaned forward to press his lips against Ellie's, and that kiss, now less tentative than the first one, became the promise of a new case they would gladly try to solve together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Let me know what you think. Kudos and comments would be highly appreciated. :)


End file.
